Computers are ubiquitous in today's society. They come in all different varieties and can be found in places such as automobiles, laptops or home personal computers, banks, personal digital assistants, cell phones, as well as many businesses. As computers become more commonplace, there is an ever increasing need for the storage of very large amounts of data. One example of a high-capacity data storage system involves a physical tape drive system.
Physical tape drive systems typically include a storage mechanism (such as a magnetic tape or disk backing stores) to which data may be written and stored on one or more physical media and a control device, known as a host or initiator, that provides an interface for use of the tape drive or target using a transmission protocol, such as small computer system interface (SCSI). Through the host (or a remote hosting computer connected or in communication with the host), data is provided to the tape drive for storage in one or more physical storage media. The host also provides control to a user of the system to select various modes of storage and/or operation of the tape drive. In general, the control and operation of the tape drive is conducted through the host device.
In some embodiments of a tape drive storage system, several hosts may be connected to or otherwise in communication with a tape drive such that the tape drive can store data from the multiple hosts. Further, each host may configure the various storage and operation modes of the tape drive system as desired by the user of the tape drive system. However, because several hosts can alter the mode of a tape drive system at any time, data written to the tape drive may not be written under the mode desired by a particular host. It is with these and other issues in mind that various aspects of the present disclosure were developed.